The central mission of the College of Chemistry is to advance society through education and research, and we have made it our responsibility to fulfill this mission, year in and year out, for more than 140 years.

Our two departments provide fundamental and applied studies of an outstanding caliber. The remarkable breadth and depth of resources available to our students readies them as chemists and chemical engineers to address society’s most urgent 21st-century issues.

College faculty have been leaders at the frontiers of knowledge since 1872. Current pioneering research includes premier programs in catalysis, thermodynamics, chemical biology, atmospheric chemistry, the development of polymer, optical and semiconductor materials, and nanoscience, among others.

The College of Chemistry is consistently ranked as one of the best places on earth to learn, teach, and create new tools in the chemical sciences. This is no accident. It’s the direct result of exceptional scholarship as well as thousands and thousands of donations from our loyal alumni and friends.

February 14, 2018

The Wolf Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to The James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry Omar M. Yaghi, University of California, Berkeley, for “pioneering reticular chemistry via metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs).”

February 5, 2018

The College salutes the pioneer women chemistry faculty at Cal. Both as scientists, and as early faculty members at the University, they helped to pave the way for the next generations of women faculty and students.

January 30, 2018

In the current issue of the journal Cell Reports, Ke Xu and his colleagues at UC Berkeley use the technique to provide a sharp view of the geodesic mesh that supports the outer membrane of a red blood cell, revealing why such cells are sturdy yet flexible enough to squeeze through narrow capillaries as they carry oxygen to our tissues.

January 24, 2018

With the right technology, the gas station of the future will make its own fuel directly from sunlight, in the process sucking up carbon and producing oxygen. Decades into the future, the same technology could provide fuel and oxygen for the first Martians, and could even be tweaked to produce fertilizer.

January 23, 2018

Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab, and his colleagues have tweaked the chemical structure of perovskite — a versatile material that already rivals silicon-based solar cells — so that the material turns from transparent

January 12, 2018

The ACS January 2018 Special Biochemistry Issue has included College of Chemistry professors Ming Hammond, Evan Miller, and David Savage among the 44 early career scientists identified as representing the future of biochemistry. These scientists are noted by the publication for tackling problems of biological relevance.

December 6, 2017

Markita Landry, UC Berkeley assistant professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering is a recipient of the second annual New Innovator in Food and Agriculture Research award for plant efficiency to study GMO-free gene editing.